In this Episode you’ll learn:
– The dietary analysis tool used by Robyn Chuter and other nutritionalists
– How the Paddison Program baseline phase is nutritionally complete: an extraordinary feat from a hand-selected number of foods
– Leafy greens and seaweed are mineral powerhouses
– EFA’s come from the foods themselves (not from fish oil or other unnecessary sources)
– Vitamins and minerals from the Paddison Program foods are in abundance
– Do we still need a B12 supplement?
– Easily meet your energy needs during this Phase
Clint: Well, thanks for joining me today on the Paddison podcast. This episode has been one that I’ve been looking forward to for ages. I’m here with Robyn Chuter and she is from Empower Total Health. She’s a naturopath counselor and EFT therapist and being a plant-based person herself, uses plant-based nutrition to reverse chronic disease from patients not just here in Australia but around the world. So Robyn is going to take us through today the parts of the basic portion of the Paddison Program and look at its nutritional diversity and its completeness so that we all feel comfortable and reassured that we’re all on something that we can feel happy about. So thanks very much, Robyn, and welcome.
Robyn: It’s a total pleasure, Clint. Thanks so much for having me on the program. It’s an honor.
Clint: Yeah, so let’s get straight into it. Let’s talk about what you’ve got there in terms of software.
Robyn: Yup.
Clint: You’ve got something that you’ve explained to me is called FoodWorks. Tell us what we’re going to look at today.
Robyn: Yes, so FoodWorks is one of the main software packages that’s used by dieticians. So if you go into a dietician and you announce that you have some particular goal, this is one of the main forms of software that they will use to create a food plan for you and make sure that it’s nutritionally complete so that you’re meeting all your nutrient targets.
Clint: So if we went to see a nutritionist and they said, “Let’s run a profile,” this would be the software that they would use?
Robyn: Yes. There’s a few on the market but this is the main one. It’s actually recommended by a good friend of mine who is a dietician, a plant-based dietician – that’s a rare bird – but this is what she uses.
Clint: Sensational. All right. Now some of the terms that we’re going to get to in just a second that we’re going to hear about include Recommended Daily Intake and Estimated Average Requirement. So just give us a reminder of where these terms come from. Are they set by the government?
Robyn: Yes, in fact, they are. So these are the terms that are used in the Australian Dietary Guidelines that is set by the National Health and Medical Research Council. So that’s something like the peak scientific body in Australia. And every year – five years, I believe it is – they revise the Australian Dietary Guidelines. And so they have these recommendations for nutrients. So the Estimated Average Requirement is the amount of a nutrient that is estimated to meet the needs of 50% of a particular segment of the population. So for instance, 50% of the needs of women aged between 35 and 45, for instance, or 50% of pregnant women, or of men over the age of 75. So they set the average requirements at the 50% mark. The Recommended Daily Intake is actually a good deal higher than that because the RDI, Recommended Daily Intake, is calculated to meet the needs of somewhere around 97 to 98% of the population.
So there’s a big safety margin added to what is the probable nutrient requirement for the average Joe on the street just to account for people who might have extra needs or because of metabolic issues or something else that’s quite unique to them. So the NHMRC also emphasizes that people don’t have to meet the RDIs for every single nutrient every day. That’s not what they’re designed or intended for. RDIs are actually intended to examine the nutrient intake of entire populations so that we can track and see how well a population is doing in terms of the nutrient intake. So in other words, if a meal plan meets the RDI – the nutrients – it’s just about guaranteed to not just meet but actually exceed the nutrient needs for most people.
Clint: Okay, so we should think of what we’re about to see is if we’re hitting RDIs, we’re really, really jumping over the highest possible bar…
Robyn: Knocking it out of the park.
Clint: Knocking it out of the park.
Robyn: Knocking it right out of the park.
Clint: All right.
Robyn: Yeah.
Clint: All right and the last question then before we look at some data and start working through the software on your screen, you need to make a selection, don’t you? And make a setting regarding whether it be a male or female. And what have we done in this particular case for this analysis?
Robyn: Yeah, for this particular case, I chose quite coincidentally a male aged 40 who weighs 75 kilos who’s 180 centimeters tall.
Clint: Which is me.
Robyn: Doesn’t that sound like anyone that you know? Honestly, it was just like I was setting this up. I was setting the parameters and I just thought, “Okay, that sounds like a fairly average male.” It turns out to be pretty much you.
Clint: That’s right.
Robyn: So for me, it’s quite funny. Now, the point of this is that for females or people with smaller body size, their nutrient requirements are actually lower. And that kind of makes sense because people with a smaller body size tend to eat less than people with a larger body size. So most couples will find that the female eats less than the male and there are some exceptions to that rule. But generally speaking, yeah, that’s how it goes. Men just eat more because they’re bigger. So when you see the amounts of food that I’m putting in for our reference male, just bear in mind that for a female, she wouldn’t need to eat as much to make her nutrient targets.
Clint: Okay, that’s beautiful. Okay, so let’s try and do this. We’re going to start with a blank screen and you’re going to start adding some of the foods that we encourage people to eat when they’ve got a chronic digestive disorder which is the case with people with rheumatoid and other autoimmune conditions. And so Robyn is just bringing up the shared screen right now. So I’m seeing that and we’re recording that. So this is all happening the way that we hope. So I’m just going to hand it over to you and start adding in some foods in here.
Robyn: Good, so you can see over here how I’ve set it as the baseline diet – 40-year-old male, light activity level, 75 kilos, 180 centimeters. So then if we flick over here, I’ll just show you what we’re looking at on the right panel before I start filling in foods on the left. So you can see here, we have the Estimated Average Requirement which I mentioned is going to hit targets of 50% of people in a particular population segment. The adequate intake is another of those designations and this is the amount of nutrients where we don’t have an EAR or an RDI but this is generally found to be sufficient. And then here’s our RDIs down here. So let’s start popping in some of those baseline foods and we’ll begin with quinoa which I know was a real staple for you, right?
Clint: Oh, yeah. Yeah, as you’re typing away there, some of the foods in the baseline part of our program include buckwheat and quinoa and sweet potato. These are our real staples that are very, very anti-inflammatory and nutrient-dense as we see some figures and stats coming up here on the screen. And whilst you’re doing that, Robyn, and filling in the breakfast and lunch, I’ve got a little measuring cup here because for a lot of people in the metric world, those people who have moved on…
Robyn: Not mentioning our friends in America, right?
Clint: That’s right. That’s right. This is what a cup looks like. A cup is about that much food. And so two cups is that much food. I have found over the years that I would tend to eat around three or a little more cups of combined quinoa and buckwheat when I would make the two grain or two pseudo-grain mix. And so you’re working off that kind of guideline and I would also find that I would have to eat three to four of those a day to keep my weight steady.
Robyn: Quinoa is not very filling and nor is buckwheat. So you can see it’s a nutrient powerhouse. Let’s have a look at our screen on the right here and you can see that just with adding in the quinoa and the buckwheat, we’ve already exceeded the average requirements for a lot of nutrients. If I scroll down, you can see we’ve already exceeded the Recommended Daily Intake for protein. So that old check of where you get your protein, I think we’ve sorted that one out. Then you can also see we’re exceeding targets for zinc and iron, phosphorus, and all sorts of things. And we’re already up to 100% of the adequate intake for the short chain omega-3 plant fat alpha-linolenic acid. That’s what we’ve got right here, alpha-linolenic acid. So we’re already at 100% of our daily requirement for that crucial omega-3 fat. So that’s pretty exciting.
Clint: Yeah, let’s just sort of celebrate that a little longer because that’s something that a lot of people always flag as something they’re concerned about. And fair enough because not many people, when you chat to your friends, family, or even potentially, your doctor about this are going to have the knowledge that these pseudo-grains and other grains – like brown rice as a good example – do contain essential fatty acids. And this came to my attention through reading Dr. Shinya’s book, “The Enzyme Factor,” where he talked about the total complete nature of eating these grains and pseudo-grains where his meal each day… Dr. Shinya has been for the last 50 years is he eats a mix of brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat, amaranth, and I think he might put another pseudo-grain in there but certainly there, those four are his staple. And he eats it over and over again. It’s as simple as it can get. But he’s a gastroenterologist and he says, “I want the perfect intestines and so that’s the way to get them.”
Robyn: Yeah, fantastic. Yeah, that’s awesome. One of the other plant foods that’s eaten a lot, particularly in parts of Japan where longevity stats are really good…so I’m thinking of the island of Okinawa with sweet potato. And you can see when we add in some sweet potato which has got to be one of my favorite foods…
Clint: Yeah, totally.
Robyn: I have sweet potato for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, you name it. Sweet potato is just amazing.
Clint: Our friend Dr. McDougall says you can live off them.
Robyn: Yeah, that’s right. I actually did one of these plans for Andrew Taylor just showing the adequacy these old potato diets. So it’s amazing how nutritious these foods are.
Clint: Right. So what are we seeing now on the screen?
Robyn: With adding in the sweet potato, you can now see again our Recommended Daily Intake for many nutrients are being met there. And in particular, the calcium. Sweet potato really has a lot of calcium. So you can see when I just click on the nutrient here, the sources are highlighted down on the bottom? And that’s where we really start getting some calcium on board. And then once I add in some greens which is the next thing that I’m going to pop in here for instance.
Clint: So all my gang, all my Paddison programmers know that greens are my favorite thing in the world.
Robyn: Oh, yes.
Clint: I can’t wait to see this just light up. Like greens’ going to light up the green screen here. If you’re listening to this and not watching this as a recorded video which you can online – I’ll post this on YouTube to accompany the podcast – we’re actually only not meeting about four things at the moment across a range of about 30 to 40 categories. Already, everything else is already exceeded in a positive way.
Robyn: Totally, totally. You can add all sorts of greens in here. I’m such a big fan of kale. I absolutely love it. So if we pop in some, yeah, let’s do some more, some more kale in here. And as you start to fill in the greens, you can see again the RDIs are… We’re close to meeting the RDI for calcium. By the way, the RDI for calcium is set pretty high in Australia – higher than, say, in the UK. So when you are meeting the RDI, actually, we’ve already met the Estimated Average Requirement. We’re 103% of the Estimated Average Requirement just with these foods alone. So as you’ll see, adding more greens and we start really getting up there. Let me see. Well, what’s your favorite green, Clint? How about we?
Clint: Spinach, baby spinach. Can you pull up some baby spinach?
Robyn: Yes, yes. Yeah, let’s do baby spinach. All right.
Clint: I would do two to three cups of baby spinach twice a day.
Robyn: That’s awesome. Let’s have some fun. Okay, so look at this. Now we’re about our RDI for calcium just with adding in that spinach. And we can see there’s a few things that we haven’t quite met there and that’s where we’re going to add in some seaweed.
Clint: Awesome.
Robyn: Because that will really get us there. So if we just do two teaspoons…
Clint: Two teaspoons? All right, now listeners know that I eat huge amounts of seaweed and I recommend dulse in particular. And so if people can get their hands on seaweed which I’ve been banging the drum about for so long about its mineral density in particular over vitamins but the mineral density is just extraordinary. I hope that’s going to make the last couple of things red go green.
Robyn: Yes, that’s where we’re getting.
Clint: I’ve eaten at times with seaweed, a cup of dulse easily, easily with every meal.
Robyn: I’ll just stop. You can add in more for sure, absolutely. Selenium is one nutrient that it’s often hard to get how to meet targets with food that’s grown in Australia. And yet, if you just add in some garlic, you can see we actually make the targets for selenium.
Clint: So we’ve got two cloves there. That’s not the easiest though, is it to get? You would have to work against your instincts to want to take in two whole cloves of garlic though, wouldn’t you?
Robyn: Sure but if it’s cut up and actually mixed into the food, it just adds a lot of flavor. So yeah, I put garlic in absolutely everything I make. Well, except for dessert. So it’s not that hard for me. Yeah.
Clint: Can you get the selenium through onions?
Robyn: Onions aren’t quite as rich a source but you could certainly add onions in. Yeah, sure.
Clint: Okay, all right. But if we don’t have to, we won’t because what I’d like to see here, what we talked about just before we started recording, it’d be really wonderful just to use like the absolute most basic number of foods to hit or exceed daily requirements. And remember if we’re hitting Recommended Daily Intake, we’re basically jumping over the highest bar that one could possibly try and jump over.
Robyn: Yes, exactly.
Clint: And if we’re jumping over that with only a small fraction of the number of foods that are in the Paddison program, then it’s only upside from that point on.
Robyn: Yup, agreed. Absolutely agreed, yeah. One of the harder things to meet on an entirely plant-based diet is the requirement for vitamin B-12. And you can see when we add in the miso, a particular type of miso which is the awase miso, just four grams which is less than a teaspoon and you can see we’ve actually exceeded the Recommended Daily Intake for vitamin B-12. When I say exceed the Recommended Daily Intake, that’s not the problem. It just means that you’ve got perfectly adequate intake of that particular nutrient.
So let’s see. Just going to add in a few extra foods here. In fact, I just realized that I was using the wrong marker, the wrong measure there. So if we just upscale our wakame there and our dulse. Did we have some in there? Yes, we did. And so if we add a couple of extra foods in here, you’ll be able to see that we meet the iodine targets as well. And this is quite a difficult thing to do on an entirely plant-based diet because plants, on the whole, aren’t known for being really high in iodine. Actually, I’m just going to swap something over here. So the piece de resistance just to really meet our iodine targets here is we’re going to pop in some nori. I love nori. I just eat this stuff. I don’t need to roll it up in sushi. I tear it up and put it in salad. It’s just delicious.
Clint: 100%.
Robyn: So now you can see we’ve met 112% of the RDI for iodine. So how fantastic is that? So 239% of the RDI for protein, all of our vitamin B targets are being met. If I added more greens, then we could get that vitamin C even higher. I’m as big a fan of greens as you are. I always say to my clients, “The major dietary deficiency that people are suffering in our society is actually green leafy vegetable deficiency. Eat your greens.”
So I want to point out too with this upper level of intake, there are certain nutrients where too much would actually be hazardous and so we shouldn’t exceed those. In the case of iron though, which is the only one in that category, the iron in plants is non-heme iron. So the intestine is able to regulate the absorption of non-heme iron really easily. So if you have a lot more non-heme iron than you need, you don’t absorb it. It just goes out in your bowel movements whereas if that was heme iron from red meat, your body can’t filter it out. It’s just going to absorb it whether it needs it or not. So excessive intake of non-heme iron is a serious health hazard but with the plant iron, with the non-heme iron, it’s not a problem. And obviously, in countries or in societies where a lot of green leafy vegetables are eaten, the iron intake is actually quite high yet they don’t have abnormally high iron levels.
So we’ve exceeded our adequate intake for the short chain omega-3s, the alpha-linolenic acid, which by the way is converted in the body into the long chain fats, EPA and DHA, so you really don’t need to worry about meeting your essential fatty acid targets. The main thing that interferes with people’s ability to convert their short chain omega-3 fats from plants into the long chain EPA and DHA is having too much omega-6 fat, having too much saturated fat, having dietary cholesterol. And so your diet, of course, eliminates all those problems. There’s no animal fat. There’s no cholesterol. And the omega-6 fat is far lower than the average Australian is eating. There’s just the amount of omega-6 that’s in the greens and in the vegetables. Again, if I click on this, you can see the sources. So the sweet potato and the quinoa and the buckwheat provide a little bit of those omega-6. This is your linolenic acid but not excessive amounts and so we’re going to see really good conversion levels of short chain omega-3s into the long chain DHA and EPA.
Clint: Okay, well. Just if you could then just summarize what we’re seeing on our screen here in case people are still trying to wrap their head around this or they’re listening to it on the podcast. We’re seeing a field of green meaning that everything is being met with one particular red associated with it which is iron. And the reason that’s red, you’ve explained to us just now is because it actually goes so high above Recommended Daily Intake that it goes into sort of the super high range. But you’ve just explained that because of the form of iron that it is, it’s harmless to the body.
Robyn: Absolutely, you’re just not going to absorb that because you don’t need it. The body’s pretty smart. It’ll filter out excessive amounts of nutrients as long as you eat them in that safe plant form.
Clint: Okay. Right, well this is obviously looking good. How does this compare to, say, some other diets that you’ve looked at or is this an anomaly? Have you ever seen a portfolio that looks as good as this with so few of foods?
Robyn: It’s pretty hard to achieve this kind of, I suppose you might call, target eating with most dietary plans. Being able to meet all of those B vitamin targets, the minerals, the omega-3s, the whole box and diet, it’s fairly unusual. For instance, when I analyzed the old potato diet, it did come up short in those omega-3s and it didn’t have enough selenium or iodine. So this combination of the pseudo-grains, the quinoa and buckwheat, the sweet potato which is phenomenally nutritious stuff, the land greens like the bok choy and the spinach and the lettuce and the kale, and then the sea greens, the sea vegetables like the dulse, wakame, and nori – that portfolio, it’s pretty stunning in its ability to meet and actually exceed these nutrient requirements.
Clint: Well, it’s funny what you can come up with when you’re just using your pain levels as a trial-and-error feedback and this is the result. This is the result of me using my body as its own alarm system and finding that this is the diet that I found gave me the greatest possible pain relief whilst including some cooked foods. Now prior to this, I was on a raw food diet but that’s not a diet that I believe in as strongly.
Robyn: It’s just hard to sustain, isn’t it?
Clint: It is.
Robyn: A raw food diet.
Clint: It’s very hard to sustain raw foods. Yeah, it’s a whole other conversation. So let’s just go on and do a little quick checklist question for you. Does the Paddison program on its even the most basic form meet protein, calcium, and essential fatty acids?
Robyn: You can see it right here. The protein, wow, more than more than you need. Certainly more than even a person doing very heavy exercise. If I raise the parameters on this to a person doing heavy exercise, they would still meet their protein needs, all the vitamins, all the minerals, the omega-3 and omega-6 fat’s all met beautifully.
Clint: How does it stack up with regards to total calorie intake or energy intake in kilojoules if we use the metric system?
Robyn: And so we can see up here, this is the estimated energy requirement. It actually exceeds the estimated energy requirement. However, as I’m sure you’ve discovered, people do not gain weight on a diet like this even if in theory, they’re eating more calories than they need because these foods are not the kinds of foods that are going to stack on weight. But certainly this would be adequate to maintain a person’s weight and of course, many people with rheumatoid arthritis are actually quite underweight. I’m sure you found that at the time that they come to see you because their guts are being absolutely ruined and they’ve got absorption problems. So they may need a little more energy requirement then you would calculate purely on the basis of their height and weight.
Clint: 100%. Couldn’t agree more with everything you’ve said there. And therefore, for people with rheumatoid who’ve been clinically shown to be malnourished and also lacking in things like potassium, then having a program like this which is extraordinarily excessive in its nutritional range is therefore going to be only of great benefit.
Robyn: I totally agree. Potassium is such an important nutrient. You can see here close to three times the adequate intake and phenomenally important for rheumatoid arthritis. Most Australians don’t get enough potassium, that is for sure.
Clint: Okay. Right, well we’re fixing that. Would you say that this diet if people are okay with it from a repetition point of view and an enjoyment point of view, is it sustainable for a long period of time?
Robyn: Yes, it is. From the point of view of meeting these nutrient targets, yes. The only issue that we might run into is just securing the broad spread of phytochemicals otherwise known as phytonutrients. There are tens of thousands of these compounds. Green leafy vegetables are actually very high in phytochemicals so including a diverse range of green leafy vegetables and also sea vegetables will ensure that you meet a lot of those targets. My understanding is that once people finish on this part of the program, they then move on to a more diversified diet. And that’s the point at which they really start securing that spread of phytochemicals.
Clint: That’s 100% correct. But some people do find that this portion of the program is so pain reducing and it keeps them in the healing groove so well that they want to stay on it for longer periods, sometimes several months. Now I myself did exactly that and up until our conversation right now, I’d been reluctant to say that it was perfectly fine to do for many, many months and I think that your point around the phytonutrients is the real one that people need to take into account. They might like to add, say, some blueberries which are very rich in phytonutrients.
Robyn: Absolutely.
Clint: From time to time.
Robyn: Yeah, so colorful fruits and vegetables are a real powerhouse as a phytochemical intake. So that would be a great thing to add in once you’re at the point where you’ve achieved some healing of the garden and you’re ready to diversify.
Clint: Okay and then what about vitamin B-12? Now you said that you had to find only one particular range of miso that would meet that. In fact, four grams of that met the B-12 requirement. I don’t think I’ve ever put miso on anything in under about like 10 grams, 20 grams because I love the taste of it. So my question is how can people know if their miso is going to be able to meet their B-12 requirements and is it safer nonetheless to supplement?
Robyn: I would say that it that it is safer to supplement just in case. The presence of B-12 in miso depends on bacterial action and so there may be some variability even from one batch to the next. I would say anyone who’s going to be on a plant-based diet, a 100% plant-based diet for longer than a couple of months, it would be wise to take an oral supplement. And just because there’s so much gut damage in people with rheumatoid arthritis which can make it very difficult to absorb vitamin B-12 – it’s one of the trickier nutrients to absorb – I would recommend using an oral spray so that they can actually absorb a substantial proportion of the B-12 through the mucous membranes of the mouth.
Clint: Okay, that’s really valuable. Okay, great. Is there any recommended vitamin B-12 that you know of outside of Australia since most of our listener base is outside?
Robyn: Let’s say I would just hop onto I heard, iheard.com. They have quite a number of oral sprays. The one I usually get is called Pure Advantage. It’s a 500 microgram spray. And for most people, three or four sprays a week will be more than adequate to maintain their vitamin B-12 status.
Clint: Okay, that’s brilliant. All right. Well, Robyn, I think that almost wraps us up. It just popped into my head as I was just about to wrap up. Some people might be looking at these figures and think, “Well, that might be a little bit outside of my capacity to eat, for instance, like three cups of this and three cups of that.” Now, the figures that you’ve used there because we’ve spoken about this prior, I have seen and I am comfortable with being the one that you’ve based this on as you said coincidentally because I’ve become that guy that you’ve put as your avatar. So now one thing people might want to consider if they’re worried about their weight is you can put these things into green smoothies which makes the consumption of these…
Robyn: Wow, absolutely! Yes, I think that’s a brilliant way of increasing your intake of greens. If you just really struggle to eat that volume of greens, by all means blend them up. I’m a big fan of green smoothies as a quick lunchtime meal. I often see clients back to back so I might be going from 9-9:30 in the morning till 4-4:30 in the afternoon. So I don’t have time. I don’t like eating in front of people. It’s not good manners.
Clint: Sure, sure.
Robyn: When you get bits of green stuff between your teeth, it’s not a good look. So I’ll actually blend my greens into a green smoothie which I can sip in between clients. And baked sweet potato makes a marvelous smoothie base.
Clint: Wow.
Robyn: It’s really good.
Clint: I’ve never… Of all the things I’ve ever done, I’ve never done that.
Robyn: So I told you I’m a sweet potato fan, right? I will eat that stuff in any way, shape, or form. I made sweet potato ice cream recently.
Clint: Wow.
Robyn: You mash it and you freeze it in an ice-cube tray and then you put it through the bottle mix and it’s just amazing. So sweet potato rocks. Blend that up with your greens. It’s quite sweet obviously especially when it’s baked. And it gives your smoothie that nice smooth texture which people normally rely on bananas to get.
Clint: Oh, yeah.
Robyn: So if they’re not yet at the point where they’re eating bananas, then you can use the sweet potato for that textural element which is actually pretty important with a smoothie.
Clint: That’s an insight right there. That’s an insight. You’ve done something that I don’t know anyone else having done. So that’s a first. Do we lose any nutrients if we cook the greens? If people are having gastritis and they just find the raw at first a little much?
Robyn: Yes. There is a small amount of loss of vitamin C and folate when you cook. Now, the longer you cook your greens, the more you’ll deplete those nutrients. So if you boil your greens until they’re a little pile of pulp like my dear mother always used to do, then there’s not much folate left in them. But if you just lightly steam then, if you just wilt down your silver beet or you just very lightly, say, water sauté your bok choy, you’ll preserve almost all the folate. And look, to be perfectly honest, we’re already getting 412% of the Recommended Daily Intake for folate so you know what? We’ve got a little to spare. Even if you do blast some off in the cooking process, it’s still looking very, very good. The vitamin C once again is 1,783% of the Recommended Daily Intake. So honestly?
Clint: One thousand?
Robyn: Yeah, exactly. Now, I would say the RDI for vitamin C in Australia is actually set too low. Like it’s barely above the level needed to prevent scurvy. So we need a lot of vitamin C. We’re one of very few species on planet Earth that don’t make our own. It’s only humans, other primates, guinea pigs, and a few species of breeding birds and bats that don’t make their own vitamin C. And animals that are under stress will actually make more vitamin C. Now, there aren’t that many health conditions that you would say are as stressful as rheumatoid arthritis, right? So people with RA, they’re under stress, other physiological stress aside from psychological stress. They need more vitamin C. So it’s no problem that we’re so far above the RDI for vitamin C. That’s about right for our primate heritage. But my point is even if you overcooked your vegetables to some degree and lost some vitamin C that way, don’t stress. It’s fine. You’re really hitting your targets for vitamin C.
Clint: Awesome. That’s very reassuring because so many deficiencies need vitamin C for absorption like iron and also like vitamin D. Both of those require vitamin C. And if it’s 1,000% with just this basic format of my program, you’ve got all those really high vitamin C levels to activate all the mechanisms. Now, where can people get a hold of you if they would like to discuss their health conditions with you because you’re a wealth of knowledge, what should they do?
Robyn: You can go to my website empowertotalhealth.com.au. So for your overseas listeners, don’t forget the .au. Though I’m Australian based, thanks to the wonders of Skype, I can see clients anywhere. I have clients in Europe, the UK, the United States, all over the world. So empowertotalhealth.com.au. I’m on Facebook. Again, Empower Total Health is my Facebook page and there is a wealth of info on my website. I have a free weekly newsletter which your listeners are very welcome to sign up for. I don’t spam. I just send out really, really solid content. So there’s two articles a week plus a recipe. The recipes are all whole food, plant-based. They won’t just include the foods in your baseline program but they are mostly gluten-free. No oil, no nasties. So certainly for those who are a little further down the track in your program, my recipes will be really suitable for them in continuing on their healing journey. And I have a number of different programs as well as doing one to one appointments. So you can check out all of that on my website.
Clint: Wonderful. So it’s Robyn Chuter at empowertotalhealth.com.au. What an episode. This has just flown by. We’re out of time but you have taken us on a whirlwind journey inside of FoodWorks and shown that even the baseline component of the Paddison program meets or exceeds every single essential vitamin and mineral needed for the human body.
Robyn: It’s just a wonder to behold, isn’t it?
Clint: Yes, it is.
Robyn: I’m pretty geeky and I’m geeking out on this.
Clint: I’m totally geeking out. This has just been so valuable and I want to thank you very much. And I’m sure some people will be in contact with you and seeking your services. So thank you very much for taking us through this, Robyn.
Robyn: It’s been an absolute pleasure, Clint. Thanks for having me on the show.